I Watched (Nearly) Every Post-Super Bowl Show Part I: The 60’s and 70’s
The Super Bowl has become this all-consuming thing in American media.
Of course, the NFL itself has become this unstoppable monolith, surviving endless amounts of scandals and health issues to reach continuing rating highs. Hell, I’m watching more football these days, even though I don’t have a team. If you live in this country long enough, you end up just kinda watching NFL broadcasts eventually. But, even if you don’t care about the 17+ weeks of regular season coverage, most people at least casually check out the Super Bowl, the final game of the season that determines the new champion.
The NFL and its various broadcast partners know it, too. It’s why the game itself feels almost secondary to everything else around it. Celebrities singing the national anthem! Celebrities in the stands! Celebrities doing the halftime performance! Celebrities in unfunny commercials hawking embarrassing products! You sometimes forget there’s a very serious football game going on. But it all seems to work; on the list of the most watched American broadcasts of all time, the top ten are all Super Bowls. Only one non-Super Bowl is even in the top twenty (the “M*A*S*H” finale, of course).
Because of these otherwise-unprecedented numbers, the party doesn’t stop after the game concludes anymore. No, celebrities are now often in the next show after the Super Bowl is over, too. Yes, the famous “Super Bowl lead-out program”, also referred to interchangeably (at least in this article) as the “post-Super Bowl show”. It’s the time slot later in the night where networks are doing everything they can to retain their temporarily massive audience, and maybe even persuade them to tune in again later that week.
At their best, the post-Super Bowl show can actually be pretty exciting, especially if you happen to be a fan of the selected program. Imagine being a big “Office” guy and realizing your favorite sitcom is about to get promoted to the big time, provided the opportunity for major guest stars, and viewed by your extended family members who otherwise had managed to never hear of it up until now. The lead-out program can also be cultural events in and of themselves; who can forget the classic “Wonder Years” pilot? Or the star-studded “Friends” event? Or that infamous Bill and Hillary interview on 60 Minutes?
At their worst, the post-Super Bowl show can be…surprisingly leaden and weird! Just as an example, the 80’s are littered with bizarre pilots that barely got their shows off the ground, let alone to cruising altitude. And the spot has been losing ground in recent years, with glitzy game shows and reality competitions burning up time as networks determine what a “broadcast show” even is anymore.
Anyway, I’ve always been fascinated by the Super Bowl lead-out program, if only because you can sort of get a sense of major American television history and business practices through them. When did networks start eschewing expensive pilots and spending their money on celebrity cameos? When did they start giving up on the spot altogether? When did they even realize it was a time slot they could even do something with? I’ve always been curious.
So, I worked my way through them! Well, at least most of them. Some are hard to find, but we’ll talk about them when we get there. To keep this from getting unwieldy for you all, I decided to break these articles out into decades. We start with the 60’s and 70’s, where the Super Bowl had yet to become the unbeatable juggernaut, and the game was followed by…whatever was going to be on TV that night anyway! Interestingly enough, though, you can sort of pinpoint when a network decides, “we might be able to do something fun with this”.
Alright, let’s get started! For the most part, I’m going off of the lead-out program Wikipedia article unless I have reason to believe it’s incorrect.
SUPER BOWL I
Show: Lassie
Episode: “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge” (Season 13, Episode 17)
Aired: January 15th, 1967
Network: CBS
I have reason to believe the Wikipedia article is incorrect.
The entry for Super Bowl I does indeed list an episode of Lassie, in this case “Lassie’s Litter Bit”. Googling the name of the episode even pulls up a few other articles related to other post-Super Bowl programming. For all intents and purposes, this is the generally accepted first Super Bowl lead-out program. This is an incredible legacy for a half-hour of TV that first aired a week after the initial Super Bowl.
Yes, “Lassie’s Litter Bit” aired January 22nd, 1967, exactly seven days after Super Bowl I. I know this primarily by just looking at the “Lassie” Wikipedia page. However, I confirmed this by pulling up the TV Guide from that week, which shows in plain English that the episode that aired after the CBS broadcast of the 1967 Super Bowl was in fact a Lassie episode titled “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge”. I don’t know who the fuck you’re trying to fool, post-Super Bowl lead-out program Wikipedia page, but it’s not me, bitch.
(I know this is a victory that manages to make me look like the insane one, but let it be known that my capacity to waste my own time in order to prove a point is nearly infinite.)
Anyway. Lassie.
If you ever want to get completely and instantly overwhelmed, pull up a Lassie episode guide sometime. A movie star that made the leap to television, the world’s most famous border collie managed to stay on the air for nineteen years and almost 600 episodes, an astounding accomplishment considering the average lifespan of a border collie is about a decade and a half.
Much like Taylor Swift, the “Lassie” TV show is generally viewed through a series of eras. I don’t possibly have the bandwidth to research the eras in detail (although this impeccable Pop Arena video should give you everything you’d ever want to know), but “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge” lands firmly in her “Ranger era” (Lassie, I mean. Not Taylor Swift). Lassie’s owner is a U.S. Forestry Service ranger Corey Stuart (Robert Bray). In this particular episode, Corey is out in the forest with Lassie putting, like, stakes in the ground for forestry reasons until he gets bitten by a rattlesnake. Will Lassie be able to get help in time, or will Corey die a miserable death on primetime television?
I’m teasing a little bit, and I don’t want to categorize this particular episode as “nothing happens”, if only because I find that kind of characterization reductive; after all, if nothing ever happened on “Lassie”, it wouldn’t have run for twenty years. But it’s definitely charmingly lo-fi, where the stakes feel very small, even though they are literally life-and-death. It’s also notable for playing out in nearly complete silence; there’s a couple of lines here and there just establishing what everyone is doing and why, but it otherwise plays out visually. It’s silly, and definitely not what one would expect as a post-football game comedown. But! “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge” goes down ridiculously easy. I get why someone could binge on 500+ episodes of this stuff without even blinking.
Show: Walt Disney’s The Wonderful World of Color
Episode: “Willie and the Yank (Part 2)”
Aired: January 15, 1967
Network: NBC
Yep! We’re still in 1967. Turns out the first Super Bowl was simulcast on both CBS and NBC, the kind of teamwork you will absolutely never see again*. Thus, Super Bowl I actually has two lead-out programs! Let’s go to DisneyLand!
*At least not until 2027, when the Big Game airs on both ABC and ESPN. But even that is kind of a corporate synergy move.
“The Wonderful World of Color” was the sixties title of a loooong-running Disney anthology series. Millennials probably know it better as “The Wonderful World of Disney”, the Sunday night program where they played theatrical successes like TOY STORY, BABE and THE LION KING, alongside less-than-theatrical stuff like the third HONEY I SHRUNK THE KID and the Kevin Nealon vehicle PRINCIPAL TAKES A HOLIDAY. The show’s history goes way further back than the nineties, however. It started life in the mid-fifties, and its episode list is maybe the only one more overwhelming than “Lassie”.
All you really need to know is that, at the time, “The Wonderful World of Color” was typically broadcasting original television movies cut up into hour-long episodes and shown over the course of several weeks. This week, Disney presented the second installment of a three-part Civil War movie entitled “Willie and the Yank” (which would later be edited down to about 80 minutes and released internationally as THE MOSBY RAIDERS). Kurt Russell stars as Willie, a teenage confederate who deserts his post after accidentally shooting an officer, later revealed to be John Mosby (Jack Ging). He escapes with the help of Henry Jenkins (James MacArthur), a Yankee soldier who will eventually fall in love with Willie’s cousin, Oralee (Peggy Lipton). Everything comes to a head on Henry and Oralee’s wedding day, as true alliances are revealed.
“Willie and the Yank” is a story about hidden identities and shifting loyalties, themes befitting a Civil War drama. I imagine this movie has deepening appeal the more of a Civil War buff you happen to be. John Mosby was a real Confederate leader (who would eventually become the United States consul to Hong Kong!), and his signature raid plays a crucial role in Episode 2, so if that interests you...there you go! This installment also happens to be the most action-heavy, so it’s a shame the YouTube upload I watched is in such poor shape. Much of the battle happens at night, and for as much as I could see, I may as well have had my screen turned off. Alas!
Still, it’s fascinating to watch 15-year-old Russell carry much of this on his back (he’s in almost every scene), and it’s always fun to see Lipton in anything, here just a year away from landing THE MOD SQUAD. The most fun of all, though, is the signature intro from Walt Disney himself. As it happens, he had just died the month before, giving his appearance here extra resonance. Disney ends up having twice the charisma and screen presence as future host Michael Eisner, although his intro also ends up being much less funny as a result.
SUPER BOWL II
Show: Lassie
Episode: “The Foundling” (Season 14, Episode 18)
Aired: January 14, 1968
Network: CBS
Another year, another Lassie episode. This time, Lassie takes it upon herself to bring home a lost doe whose mother may not accept her after interacting with a well-meaning human couple. It’s just as low-stakes and serene as “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge” the year before, but this time, it’s paired with some nice food for thought. Ranger Corey wants to open up a new campsite in the forest, but Ranger Bill is hesitant to increase the number of tourists walking in and out of this natural habitat. When this lost doe gets accidentally “marked”, Bill’s point seems to be made. Corey seems to be pretty cocky when Lassie saves the day, but I don’t know that this is a good argument against restricting the forest. A dog isn’t going to be able to bail out every conflict that a tourist causes, you know?
I will say, though, the empathy in which this story is told is pretty impressive. The tourists that cause all the trouble in the first place aren’t necessarily condemned; they take the doe back to the rangers out of a desire to help, not out of a desire to be malicious. They genuinely just didn’t know the consequences! I feel like this is the kind of thing I would have held onto as a kid, which would seem to make this a successful outing. There’s even a nice little action sequence where Lassie takes on a bobcat! Overall, I liked this a little better than “Crisis at Devil’s Gorge”.
SUPER BOWL III
Show: General Electric College Bowl
Aired: January 12, 1969
Network: NBC
Although it sounds like the title of a football game, the G.E. College Bowl is a student-driven quiz show, as teams from two different colleges face off against each other in order to win grant and scholarship money. It had a nice big fat run from the fifties through the eighties, and has been revived numerous times since, the most recent being a Peyton Manning-hosted affair that wrapped up just a couple of years ago.
This is the first episode in this series I wasn’t able to locate by the deadline and, unlike other missing entries, I feel fairly comfortable calling this true lost media. It just doesn’t feel like the kind of thing anybody would feel the need to preserve. It’s not an indictment on the presumed quality of the program; there are a handful of episodes that exist on YouTube and the Internet Archive for you to enjoy and they all manage to stay engaging in a scholarly, dry way. The secret to the College Bowl, it seems to me, is that it matches the depth of knowledge required to compete on your average episode of JEOPARDY with the unbridled (and vaguely unearned) enthusiasm that comes with attending an Ivy League school. Students from schools like Bradley or Rutgers are asked rapid-fire questions about the phylum of beetles or whatever and you can palpably feel the ecstasy from the panel and the audience with each correct answer (or, alternately, the agony that comes with each miss). In some ways, it’s the same joy people get from watching college sports in general; non-professionals doing something because they love it (but also secretly because there’s the potential for a payout later on down the line).
As of right now, I wasn’t able to specifically review the 1/12/69 episode of the College Bowl, though I have no reason to believe it would be any different from any other episode you could pull up on YouTube. That said, if there’s an immense archive of G.E. College Bowl episodes out there that I managed to just completely miss, please let me know! I’d love to see it.
SUPER BOWL IV
Show: Lassie
Episode: “The Road Back (Part 2)” (Season 16, Episode 15)
Aired: January 11, 1970
Network: CBS
We enter the seventies with the second installment of a four-part epic event in the Lassie-verse, “The Road Back”. Unfolding over the month of January, the entire thing feels like the “Lassie” writers’ room traveled through the future to hear my light jabs at its relatively stakes-free existence broadcast, then returned to their own time in order to put me in my place. Over the course of eighty minutes or so, Lassie travels with Ranger Cory to San Francisco to open up a school in Chinatown, stops a little girl from running into traffic, gets hit by a car, runs away from the animal hospital after it catches on fire, saves a seaman in Sausalito, plays matchmaker for a despondent student and a kindly soldier, then dodges the cops like she believes ACAB with all her heart. They certainly showed me!
As these things often go, the actual episode that led out Super Bowl IV (Episode 2) is the least exciting of the quartet, although there’s plenty of footage of Lassie just walking through Fisherman’s Wharf; the entire four-part story in general recognizes the novelty it has to offer and takes great advantage of its location shooting. This is also the episode that introduces the frankly completely insane narrative convention of Lassie having flashbacks. She sees a man riding on a horse and starts flashing back to previous footage of Corey riding on a horse, re-establishing the stakes of her being lost in a major city. So Episode 2 isn’t a total loss. But, would Lassie get home? You’d have to watch for two more weeks to find out! But, also, yes.
SUPER BOWL V
Show: Bing Crosby Pro-Am Golf Tournament
Aired: January 17, 1971
Network: NBC
Like all the other occasional sports-related Super Bowl lead-out programs, I hold the possibility that this has been archived somewhere; you can find loose clips here and there of broadcasts from other years. However, I was unable to locate any footage of the 1971 iteration of the Bing Crosby Pro-Am Golf Tournament (which is now known as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am) by the time of this writing. It’s probably for the best; I’m not much of a golf guy, and if I had managed to get a hold of even some of the ninety-minute broadcast, I can only imagine how quickly my wife would be packing an overnight bag as I watched and pretended to enjoy it.
For those who are keeping score, though, the winner of the purse in 1971 was Tom Shaw, who defeated Arnold Palmer by two strokes. I suspect this was a major defeat! But I’m not the guy to confirm that!
SUPER BOWL VI
Show: 60 Minutes
Episode: “Will The Real Howard Hughes…When In Rome/Can anybody Here Beat Muskie?”
Aired: January 16, 1972
Network: CBS
Infuriatingly, 60 MINUTES, maybe the most important documentation of current events that America has, does not appear to really have an accessible archive. Thus, all I was able to dig up from this particular evening’s installment was a brief three minute clip of the first segment, which details the controversy surrounding the then-recent Howard Hughes autobiography as supposedly dictated to by Clifford Irving.
Even in the short clip, you can feel a real skepticism from 60 Minutes host Morley Safer regarding Irving’s truthfulness. Turns out Safer was correct in his misgivings; less than two weeks after this airing (and a fat lawsuit from Hughes himself), Irving confessed to the autobiography being bogus, and he ended up going to prison for about a year and a half. Yay, journalism!
SUPER BOWL VII
Show: The Wonderful World of Disney
Episode: “The Mystery in Dracula’s Castle (Part 2)”
Aired: January 14, 1973
Network: NBC
We return to the wonderful world of Disney with “The Wonderful World of Disney”. Tonight, we get the second installment of a two-part TV movie “The Mystery in Dracula’s Castle”. Now, given that title and that title alone, what would you imagine this movie to be like? One might hold the anticipation of this being a haunted house caper, with fog machines running akimbo, some moving portraits hung on the wall, likely even an appearance from the Dark Lord himself, maybe played by a beloved character actor. Could one hope for Vincent Price? Is this a Vincent Price-starring family horror flick?
That’s exactly what this movie is! No, just kidding, it’s a silly seaside summer adventure, where the two children of a mystery novel writer run around the vacation town they’re residing in. Her oldest son, Alfie, is an aspiring filmmaker, and is determined to make the next great Dracula film, presumably because the creators of “The Mystery in Dracula’s Castle” came up with the title first, then had to work backwards. His younger brother, Leonard, has been cast as Count Dracula himself, but would rather be developing his skills as a master sleuth. The titular castle turns out to be an old lighthouse, which Alfie for some reason scouts as the perfect shooting location. It’s unfortunate, then, that it ends up being the hideout for a pair of amateur jewel thieves. Oh, and there’s a rascally, kleptomaniac dog! What a sticky situation.
The second installment is much more focused on the concept of a “mystery”, as Leonard asks his novelist mother, Marsha, for some advice on how to solve this case of the missing jewels. Her thoughts are all kind of meta-commentaries on the functions of mystery novels (“it’s always the person you least expect”, “if there’s a butler, he did it”, etc.), and it would all have been fun had the list of suspects in this movie not been so shallow. As far as who stole the jewels, that’s not much of a brain-stumper: it’s the two thieves we’ve already met who told us they did it in Part One. As far as who they were stolen for, it turns out it’s the only other prominently featured character, the seemingly-kindly store owner, played by John Fiedler, the voice of Piglet. The one you least suspected!!! Oh, spoilers, I guess.
Anyway, it turns out the screenwriter, Sue Milburn, was the winner of a 1971 Walt Disney Filmwriting Award, and was inspired by her own love of horror movies, including the Hammer horrors coming out of the UK. She would go on to do some television writing here and there throughout the 70’s, an episode of “Charlie’s Angels” here, an episode of “The Bionic Woman” there. Good for her!
SUPER BOWL VIII
Show: “The New Perry Mason”
Episode: “The Case of the Tortured Titan”
Aired: January 13, 1974
Network: CBS
Post-Super Bowl programming is usually known for either being high-profile pilots or, more recently, major episodes of already-popular programs. Super Bowl VIII, then, is notable for being followed by one of the last episodes of a lesser-known program. As many football players are known to say, “c’est la vie”!
Unfortunately, the original Perry Mason is not a show I’m super-familiar with, although I can tell you it ran for almost ten years and close to 300 episodes through the late-50’s/early-60’s. I am exactly one episode more familiar with “The New Perry Mason”, which ran for 15 episodes in 1972/73 before being completely forgotten about. “The Case of the Tortured Titan” is episode 13 of its shortened run, and it feels like a show that would have been on its last legs had it ever been walking upright at all. The production feels a little on the cheap side, with several scenes seemingly completely unscored. One of our prominent guest stars, Elaine Giftos, stumbles on her lines and just keeps going, like a 60’s episode of “Doctor Who”. The case itself, about the disappearance of a prominent and secluded architect, is a little stilted and lifeless.
The biggest issue with “The New Perry Mason”, though, is at the top. You can tell you have an issue with a television show if, going into it completely cold, you have no instinct as to which actor is supposed to be your lead. Anyone can watch one contextless scene of “Mad Men” with the sound off and know, essentially intuitively, that Jon Hamm is the main focal point. So it goes, I imagine with Steve Carrell in “The Office” or Kiefer Sutherland in “24”. The original Perry Mason starred Raymond Burr and, while I can’t evaluate his performance as Mason, I know his work well enough in other movies that I have no doubt he would pass this test. Our new Perry Mason, Monte Markham, fails this test for me constantly. It’s not that Markham is not an accomplished actor himself; he is! But he is so bland and uncharismatic as Perry Mason, and it’s a crippling blow for this outing.
All of this does inspire me to check out the original “Perry Mason”, though! The basic premise of “talky legal procedural that requires patience and attention” is sort of refreshing in a century so far dominated by hot-shot forensic and police shows. But “The New Perry Mason” just didn’t satisfy. Maybe the Old can get it done.
SUPER BOWL IX
Show: NBC Nightly News
Aired: January 12, 1975
Network: CBS. Just kidding, NBC.
Oh boy, the news!
It won’t shock you that I wasn’t able to track this down, although there’s always the possibility that it exists on some VHS upload on the Internet Archive somewhere. It’s probably for the best; I barely watch the news now, and I can’t imagine justifying blowing thirty minutes on a rerun of the news. I might have actually been upset had I found this.
I wanted to at least postulate as to what could have been covered on the news that night. Onthatday.com indicates it may have been a slow news day; besides the results of the Super Bowl, it only lists the announcement of the first car rebates, this time by the Chrysler Corp. The New York Times indicates such exciting stuff as the Prime Minister of Pakistan hitting up the U.S. for armaments, the rise of trance music, and the murder of a man in Riverside Park. Any and all of those could have been discussed on the NBC Nightly News! Imagine any of those stories being delivered to you by everyone’s favorite news man Floyd “The Big Tuna” Kalber! Having fun yet?
SUPER BOWL X
Show: The Phoenix Open Golf Tournament
Aired: January 18, 1976
Network: CBS
Another golf tournament likely lost to time, much to the relief of my very patient wife.
This time, the winner is Bob Gilder, who snagged the purse over Roger Maltbie. The only other thing of note here is that, since 1973, the Phoenix Open has always been scheduled for the same weekend as the Super Bowl. It should be noted that this is the one and only time a single network was able to broadcast both (the 1976 broadcast of the Phoenix Open had to start in media res). To avoid this going forward, there is now a labyrinthine rotation of television rights so that both events are never broadcast at the same time by the same network. I think that barely qualifies as “interesting” so I’ll move on to 1977.
SUPER BOWL XI
Show: The Wonderful World of Disney
Episode: “Kit Carson and the Mountain Men (Part 1)”
Aired: January 9, 1977
Network: NBC
Another year, another Disney TV movie, this time the first installment of a two-part story detailing the adventures of Kit Carson, a fictionalized version of a real American frontiersman (although actor Christopher Connelly is much better looking than the actual Carson).
Up to this point, watching the movies for this article have felt somewhat like homework. I gotta say, though, the first part of “Kit Carson and the Mountain Men” was fairly rousing! Maybe it’s the relatively quick pace; the story moves at a good clip, with conflicts and stakes firmly established. It was also a treat to see Robert Reed, the much beleaguered paterfamilias of “The Brady Bunch”, pop up in something he actually seemed to enjoy doing. “Kit Carson” also gets a lot of mileage out of the running thread of a kid sidekick who appears starstruck by Carson due to all the penny novels he’s read about him. I love it when heroes are already legends in the universe of a show or movie! I wouldn’t call this hour (nor its concluding second hour) perfect by any means, but it beat “The Mystery of Dracula’s Castle”, if only in terms of honesty. Is Kit Carson in it? Check! Are there mountain men? You bet! See? It’s not that hard!
(It should be noted that this entry constitutes somewhat of a “best guess” for me; the Wikipedia entry states that the lead-out program for Super Bowl XI was an episode of something called “The Big Event”. The episode title? “Kit Carson”. It seems at first glance to be a reasonable guess on Wikipedia’ part: “The Big Event” was a reskinned version of the NBC Sunday Night Movie, made to expand the potential offerings to include mini-series and sporting events. The only issue with that is that any sort of listing archive I can find (including the NBC Archive) indicates that “The Wonderful World of Disney” aired that night, not “The Big Event”. Given the otherwise-remarkable coincidence that TTWD aired a Kit Carson movie that night, I feel I’m once again more right than the Wikipedia page. Anyway.)
SUPER BOWL XII
Show: “All in the Family”
Episode: “Super Bowl Sunday” (Season 8, Episode 16)
Aired: January 15, 1978
Network: CBS
A milestone moment in the history of the Super Bowl broadcast, in that this appears to be the first lead-out program specifically designed to take advantage of its spot after the Big Game. This late-stage episode of “All in the Family” is allll about the Super Bowl, establishing a tradition that many lead-out programs in the decades to come would keep alive.
I’m pretty well-versed in prime “All in the Family”, which this deep Season Eight episode decidedly is not. Where the first few years of the program was unafraid to dig into the deep-rooted bigotry of Archie Bunker in order to fuel crisply-written (and very funny) heated discussion and arguments amongst the household, Carroll O’Connor’s defining role here is mostly just a jerk (although still decidedly homophobic). He also owns a bar now, which the show would eventually go all in on a couple years later as it transitioned into “Archie Bunker’s Place”. It’s exceedingly difficult for any show to keep its finger on the pulse of America for very long, but it’s weird to see something like “All in the Family” begin transforming into a workplace comedy.
Anyway, it’s a big day for Archie Bunker’s place; it’s Super Bowl Sunday, and he’s selling sandwiches for $2.00 a pop. He’s also intent on taking 10% of the gambling pool going around. All of this greed at the expense of his friends and patrons will come to a head when two robbers come in to take the money along with any valuables. Oddly, the robbers insist on everyone pulling their pants down before they leave, and I know that kinda sounds like a weak joke premise on my part but I promise it really happened. Because of this, I think we may learn that Meathead has a small dick? I think this was meant to be humorously humiliating rather than resembling a sinister kink porn.
All in all, it’s still a decent sitcom episode! But it’s no longer the daring revelation “All in the Family” used to be. But then, what is?
SUPER BOWL XIII
Show: “Brothers and Sisters”
Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)
Aired: January 21, 1979
Network: NBC
I thought I had the first episode of this frat house sitcom in hand. Alas, I quickly realized the YouTube upload I had found was in fact the second episode. Weirdly, there are a handful of easily findable episodes of “Brothers and Sisters” floating around out there (no mean feat considering they only ever made twelve), but the pilot doesn’t appear to be one of them. It doesn’t help that there are multiple other shows and movies with the name “Brothers and Sisters”.
It’s probably for the best. While I recognize the continued popularity of the “horny college campus” style of comedy, it’s maybe my least favorite genre. I don’t know if you’ve seen ANIMAL HOUSE lately, but it hasn’t aged particularly well for me, and I can’t imagine this LAMPOON-inspired show would have fared any better. So it’s probably best I just come to a soft landing with the 70’s and get ready for the next decade.
I’ll end with this. Interestingly enough, this was one of three network frat house sitcoms to premiere in the 78-79 TV season. America had ANIMAL HOUSE fever, baby! The other two: ABC’s “Delta House” (which had the distinction of actually being an official spinoff of ANIMAL HOUSE) which ran for 13 episodes and CBS’ “Co-Ed Fever”, which aired for only 6 weeks. I guess that ANIMAL HOUSE fever broke, baby!